Bring out your fancy frocks ladies and gentlemen, it’s Friday, it’s December 10, it’s Nobel day! This means that thousands of important people from all over the world are eating an incredibly posh dinner in Blå Hallen in Stockholm – right this minute.  I wasn’t invited, probably never will be, but to get in the right gala mood, click here  and read Gabriels brilliant post from last year about this huge party.

But first, a crash course in The Nobel Prize and the man himself, mr Alfred Nobel!

The Nobel Prize is probably the most prestigious award in the world and is awarded to “those who, during the preceding year, shall have conferred the greatest benefit on mankind”. Prize-winning discoveries include X-rays, radioactivity and penicillin. Peace laureates include Nelson Mandela and Barack H. Obama and Nobel laureates in Literature are, amongst many others, Ernest Hemmingway and Doris Lessing. The Nobel Prize has been awarded to people and organizations every year since 1901  for achievements in physics, chemistry, physiology or medicine, literature and peace. Today, on Nobel Day, the prize winners receive their prizes and the big gala afterwards marks the end of a week filled with speeches, conferences and receptions. The Nobel Peace Prize is awarded in Oslo the same day, this stems back from the days when Sweden and Norway was a union. This years winner,  Liu Xaiobo, one of China’s leading dissidents, is serving an 11-year sentence in a jail in north-east China for state subversion and did not take part in today’s ceremony.

 As we all know, we can thank Swedish  chemist, engineer, inventor and entrepreneur Alfred Nobel for the Nobel Prize. In his will, Nobel declared that his enormous fortune should be converted into a fund and invested in safe securities.  He was born on October 21, 1833, in Stockholm and died on December 10, 1896, in San Remo. He dedicated his life to explosives, and his inventions include a blasting cap, dynamite and smokeless gunpowder. Nobel became famous across the world in 1882 when dynamite was used for the first time on a large scale when building a tunnel. At the time of his death, Nobel held 355 patents in different countries and was a very wealthy man. Alfred Nobel never married, he wrote poetry in English, spoke six languages fluently and only went to school for one year.

Nobel Prize Trivia:

The prize is currently SEK 10 million (USD 1.5 million, EUR 1.1 million) for each prize category.

A total of 40 women have received the Nobel Prize. Compare that to 773 men…

The youngest laureate  is Lawrence Bragg, who was 25 years old when he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics with his father in 1915.

The oldest laureate to date is Leonid Hurwicz, who was 90 years old when he was awarded the Prize in Economic Sciences in 2007.

The banquet was cancelled in Oslo in 1979 because the laureate Mother Teresa refused to attend, saying the money would be better spent on the poor. Mother Teresa used the US$7,000 that was to be spent on the banquet to hold a dinner for 2,000 homeless people on Christmas Day.

Alright, let’s party then, shall we?